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Hostage is yet another great game from way back! I used to love this game (although I’ve played it mostly on C64) and it hasn’t lost any of its charm (neither through porting to PC, nor through the aging process).

The premise is simple. You are in charge of a special forces, who need to break into the embassy and free all the hostages. You have the choice to either get all the hostages out of the building or simply shoot all the terrorists.

The game is played in various stages. First you need to place your sharpshooters at the appropriate locations around the embassy. The map will show you the X marked spots, where they need to be positioned.

On the way there they need to avoid getting spotted by the searchlights, as they will be showered with bullets and eventually killed if they’re not careful enough. You can duck into doorways, jump behind the fences or even crawl under the searchlight.

Once all snipers are placed into position, a helicopter will deliver another three members to the roof of the embassy. These three team members will have the task of climbing down the side of the building, crashing through the window and entering the embassy. The snipers on the outside may check out the windows on their side of the building, but don’t be tempted to fire at silhouettes you see, those might be innocent hostages.

Once inside the building you need to find all the hostages and get them to the topmost floor from where they can be rescued. Be careful you don’t get shot on the way. Remember, hostages don’t move on their own, so if you see a hostage moving there is bound to be a terrorist right behind him. Also note that you won’t be able to guide more then one hostage through the building at the time. A hostage will follow you automatically once you meet with him face to face.

The game has three levels of difficulty and several missions in each level. You start off as a lieutenant and once you successfully (without casualties) finish the toughest mission (assault) at that rank, you’re in for a promotion. The problem is that on the next level you get to replay the same game over again, only it’s somewhat harder to play (less info on the map, less time…). And it’s this repetitiveness that I deducted one point off the perfect score for this game for.

Otherwise the game features nice 16 color EGA graphics and only basic sounds. It supports joystick control and if you ask me that’s really the best way of playing it (brings back even more fond memories of the C64 days – at least for me). I should probably just warn you that you need to slow the DOSBox down to around 580 cycles to play this game, otherwise it’s too fast.